Dell EMC Unity XT reviews

I have a few customers who are using Dell EMC products for storage, backup, and other different purposes. 

On the Data Domain side, the most attractive feature is the compression ratio, which none of the other products in the market are currently able to provide. On the Unity side, what customers mostly like is the availability guarantee. 

I have been working with Dell EMC Unity XT for three years. 

This product has been stable. 

Dell EMC Unity is scalable. 

This product does bring a ROI. As I have seen, it helps them to protect their investment since it is future-proof and scalable, so they don't have to change products every year or so. Because of those things, I have seen customers using the EMC product for more than three years. 

When I see other products—like HP, Huawei, and Lenovo—from competitors, I have seen a lot of disadvantages with EMC, price-wise. Huawei and Lenovo are very price competitive. 

Looking at the price point for a country like Sri Lanka, where we have a very low economy, I think you need to look at a pricing mechanism that is a bit more flexible. 

I rate Dell EMC Unity an eight out of ten because, economically, there are a few things that Dell needs to improve. 

My primary use cases of this solution are to install storage and perform tech refreshment.  

The most valuable features of this product are its reliable storage and its archiving feature.

An area for improvement is the available capacity. If a customer goes with a base model, which would have its own limit, they could not go beyond the model-supported capacity, so an increase would be good.

I have been using this solution for two years.

My impression is that the solution is stable and reliable.

The solution is scalable to whatever capacity the model allows.

We have had customers reporting issues with slow responses from the support team.

The initial setup is a simple process, taking around half a day at most.

The pricing for this product is manageable, though slightly higher than comparable products.

I trust this product, compared to other vendors. It is best suited to small to medium-sized companies. When implementing Unity XT, make sure that the installation team is clear on the under-storage concepts and product knowledge. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

We use it for both file and block in a converged system, supporting a VMware environment and virtualization. VMware is the primary use case.

We have deployed it at remote locations; in a converged platform it really helps. We don't have to have two different storage system which helps to minimize the footprint.

It is a platform that we have standardized on for remote sites which enables us to have engineers and admins who are trained on and knowledgeable about the platform across the board. That enables them to support those sites, which is super-beneficial for us because we can do more with less.

The ability to mix and match SSDs with flash, and spinning disk in there as well, really allows us to meet our performance requirements.

Overall, the most valuable thing for our use case is the flexibility to have multiple-protocol support.

We'd like to see a cheaper version of an all-flash array in that footprint.

It's very stable. We haven't had any major issues with downtime.

It scales very well. It's built into the model line which allows you to scale as necessary. You can choose the model you need to scale with your needs.

Dell EMC's tech support is awesome. We've used both onsite help and remote phone support and I have nothing but great things to say about them.

The setup was really straightforward. We have a long history of using the Dell EMC product line so we are very familiar with the platforms and how they work. This was just the next evolution.

I give the solution an eight out of ten because it meets our use case very well. But it's an eight because nothing is perfect. There is always room for improvement, whether that be in the UI or something else.

Our primary use case is for our product, Oracle Database, and it's performing very well.

The benefit of the solution is that it allows us to maintain an Oracle Database for our product, for our customers. Given the performance of the Unity array, we've been able to do more with less.

It's just a solid platform.

I would like to see better compression, better dedupe. It's not nearly as good as what is built into the XtremIO. I understand why that is the case, but if they can take some of that technology and leverage that a little bit better in the Unity array, that would be great. That would be the first improvement.

It's rock solid. All of the EMC arrays are rock solid. I wouldn't expect anything less.

Scalability is phenomenal.

Technical support is typically very good. The only issue is, where our products are located. it's hard to get technical support in there. Only certain individuals can go in there, so finding that right, cleared person is sometimes a challenge.

This is just the next generation. We started with the CX models, we went to the Celerra, and now we're only blocks. We've used the 5300, the 5400s. We've used them all for years and years.

When selecting a vendor what's important are 

• price
• the name
• the product itself 
• most importantly, stability. 

I need to know that I've got a device that's running and it's not going to go down; that has rock-solid stability. That's the issue.

The initial setup is different from the VNX arrays and the CX arrays, which we have played with and used for years. The interface is just different.

Previously, we manually did all of our RAID groups. We didn't use the pools in the VNX2, we just went down to RAID groups because that would give us the best performance. We could maintain that performance, we could control that. With Unity, that went away, so that was a little bit of a learning curve. We had to understand and learn to trust that it was going to do what it needed to do.

Compared to XtremeIO, the unity is a two out of 10. Compared to other products, like Compellent, which is a Dell product, I think it's better than the Compellent. I think it's better than the 3PAR, I think it's better than the Netapp. The whole VNX/Unity line has been the industry leader, as far as I'm concerned. if I were to rank the Unity against all of its equivalent competitors, I would say it's probably a nine out of 10.

I would give a colleague the advice that he needs to look at what his product does, or what the use case is for that device. The Unity array is, by design, block, with unified on top of it. NetApp is, by default, file, with a block added on, which is kind of a hybrid; it's not really block at all. It depends on what you're doing. If you're looking for a filer, NetApp is the way to go. But if you're looking for block storage, by far EMC Unity is the way to go. That is its design.

The first time we got a Unity was last year. We started deploying some of our file system data into it. We have been seeing a significant improvement, not just the way that we take Snaps, but with the recoveries as well. We're also using it for block storage.

The way it takes the Snaps, that is one of the best features. Snapshot performance is what is key in the Unity, compared to a traditional VNX.

The reporting, I'm comparing the VNX with Unity. The VNX reporting is much more granular. The information that we need in terms of the IOPS, for example, and things like what my compression value is, that kind of information is pretty straightforward and you can just go to the dashboard and look for the information.

Unity is a pretty stable product.

I know there are new, scalable versions of Unity that are out there. We recently have been getting more because our data is increasing. Recently we got the latest Unity model, and we are planning to convert most of our VNX data over to the Unity at some point.

Technical support is five stars out of five. Every time it has dialed home for any of the issues that we have, so far we have seen very good support from EMC.

The new upgrades, the processors get changed, a new box comes in, there are new security vulnerabilities that the security team will ask us to analyze; those are the issues where we ask support for that information. We get a response pretty quickly.

The setup is straightforward.

We did not evaluate other solutions. We have been an EMC shop for a very long time and we will continue to use it.

I really like the true unified storage box.

We use it as block storage. We are hosting Video on Demand Service and it is doing pretty well. Previously, VNX required separate hardware to support file based storage which is not required anymore.

To the best of my knowledge, migration from VNX to Unity without VPLEX/RecoverPoint is not available right now. If Dell/EMC will do this, then I would give them a rating of 10/10.

We have used it for seven months.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10.

We used to deploy VNX5200. We moved to a new box due to technology improvements.

The initial setup was straightforward. We present our all storage to EMC VPLEX and then VPLEX presents the storage to hosts.

Pricing is relatively good compared to other vendors with the same specifications.

We have compared HPE 3PAR, Huawei OceanStor, and Lenovo Storage.

For greater efficiency, use SSD, SAS, and NL-SAS with FAST.

Use at least 10-20% SSD of whole storage, 20-30% of SAS, and the rest with NL-SAS. This will give you good performance as well as provide you with a cost-effective solution.

Lately, the biggest use I've seen is around VDI and data migrations - migrating from the old VNX platform onto a new Unity.

So far so good. Everybody has been very happy with it. It has been a very seamless transition. The performance, from a VDI perspective, has been very good. They are very happy with it.

• Ease of use
• Ease of management
• Ease of deployment
• The GUI is very user-friendly.

I don't see a lot of room for improvement. Perhaps if they added more 10GB ports to the back of the system, so you have more IOPS out of the box itself to the network, that would help. But other than that it's a great platform.

The stability is awesome. It is very stable. No issues.

No issues with scalability. It is very good.

Our customers have only had to use technical support for replacing drives and things like that. When they do, they are able to get through to the right people and get the help they need.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Very easy.

Definitely do it.

• Enterprise production services
• Wide variety of applications
• Block only

It did not. Simpler interfaces mean less capabilities for managing. Inexplicable rules of configuration contribute to inefficient disk allocation. The Unity units are an okay upgrade from VNXe, but are a poor substitute for a VNX2 model. It limits the management, distribution, monitoring, and implementation of our storage LUNs.

None. Having used EMC products for more than 15 years, this is the first product in that time that I could find nothing to like.

• Improve the interface and provide more management capability.
• Remove the configuration limits.
• Start over.

Dell is far worse at support than EMC was. It headed downhill fast.

EMC for more than 15 years. Prior solutions were VNX and VNX2.

in-house.

Setup is simple, but at the expense of key management features.

Pricing is as high as it has ever been for EMC.

Compared IBM Storwize and some Dell storage options.

Software updates have to be downloaded to the root of the device. This pushes the available space to 95% utilization. Poor design.